Brothers and sisters farming together can make for many different, interesting and somewhat challenging dynamics.

Dairywoman Jessica Peters works on her family’s 275-cow Jersey dairy in Meadville, Pennsylvania. She regularly keeps Spruce Row Farm’s 5,000-plus social media followers up to speed with straightforward, hold-nothing-back, tell-it-like-it-is farm updates.

I live near Bradford County in Pennsylvania. In 2012, Bradford County ranked ninth in the state and 144th in the nation for milk production. In 2014, Bradford was among the 44 counties nationally that produced 50 percent of the nation’s milk, as reported by the Kansas City Market Administrator’s office.

With low milk prices and tight margins, most dairies might not have much appetite for new investments these days, but that doesn’t mean adoption of new technology has stopped.

Many dairy parlors are using a biometric system to authenticate employees’ attendance and as a time clock for punching in and out or entering and exiting work stations. The term biometrics is derived from the Greek word bio (life) and metrics (to measure).

When someone mentions A.I., minds in the dairy business immediately think about artificial insemination. However, this article will focus on a different type of A.I.

Weight gain. Two words that strike fear in humans – unless they’re talking about calves. It’s well documented a healthy calf should, at a minimum, double their birthweight before weaning, but the scale doesn’t tell the whole story and, sometimes, it can be misleading.

In our previous article, “Precision nutrition for calves: Moving beyond crude protein concentration in milk replacer,” we presented substantial evidence for utilizing synthetic amino acids to better supply building blocks for growth and reduce costs associated with overfeeding protein.

“We need to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.” This quote, which is often attributed to Albert Einstein, accurately sums up our quest to deliver optimal nutrition to pre-weaned calves.

Don’t let their small size fool you; transporting dairy calves is tricky. If the process doesn’t go well, you can run into a plethora of problems, including bovine respiratory disease (BRD). BRD pathogens are found on virtually every farm at some level.